I’ve been looking at the idea of moving to somewhere in SE Asia and I have a few questions.
I’m a Speech Language Pathologist (M.S. in Communications Sciences and Disorders) and I’m interested in doing telepractice over the internet. I would be an American citizen working as an independent contractor for a Canadian company and living in (possibly) Taiwan. I have absolutely no idea of how to unravel the tax mysteries there (do I pay US income tax, Canadian, Taiwan, all of them, some of them, none of them, can I just glue some cash to a duck and kick it in the direction of North America and pray?). Does anyone have any clue about these matters which they could share?
This all hinges on getting a good, well routed internet connection though. The company I want to work through requires 200kbps up and down (should be relatively easy), and maximum 200ms ping (ouch, the length of the trans-Pacific cable alone is gonna eat up a LOT of that). So I’m wondering if anyone who’s there now could use speedtest or another online tool to see what kind of connection they get to North America (I don’t know what the rules are for posting links, otherwise I’d give the URL for the specific site I need to know ping times to… Please PM me if you don’t mind testing that), and post the results here?
Which leads me to wonder if there are any reasonably quiet places to live/work. Personally I don’t mind noise that much, I’ve lived in cities all over North America and spent time in some South American cities, however to do my job requires enough quiet so that I can properly assess voice, articulation and other aspects of speech which take a critical ear. To keep costs reasonable I’d like to work out of my home. Is that the kind of living situation I can find while still having easy access to the city and culture?
Finally, would any of this even be allowed? Is there a visa which covers this?
Sorry, mate. I’m of no help here, but I’m sure someone will come along in the next day or so that will know something (Saturday nights are slow, more guys about on a Sunday).
For visa specific questions, do a search and post on this part of the forum for more speedy answers.
If you are a US citizen, then you must file/possibly pay US income tax regardless of where you earned it… most other countries doesn’t care if you earned money outside of the country.
As far as visa goes, you will have to be a student, full time worker, or tourist to get a visa here, or you can come here on a rotating 30 day landing visa, but that will get tiring…
I guess if your visa does not allow work that may cover freelance work as well but honestly I have no idea how they will enforce that… because usually illegal work is caught while you are at work… from my research (and information on visa is difficult to find… and sometimes even asking that is not allowed by many forums for whatever reason) the US doesn’t care if you earn money online… as long as you’re not actually “going to work” if your visa does not allow work. I don’t know about Taiwan.
Your ping to a US based server is going to be around 200-300ms minimum… Light will travel around the earth in 1/7 of a second, double that for pings (since this is a two way communication) so if you go halfway around the earth, then your ping will not be lower than 1/7th of a second. Add server/router delays and you won’t get less than 200ms on a good connection from the US to Taiwan.
I was hoping to see better intra-Asia pings. I consistently see pings of under 160ms from Nagano, Japan to the server I have to reach in Saskatoon, Canada, but I don’t want to live in the cold (and expensive) highlands of Japan! Hong Kong shows me sub 215ms, but thats just outside of my range. Unfortunately the site I use to see pings from around the world doesn’t show me a lot of Asian locations so I don’t have any idea about Taiwan internet speeds. I was hoping that maybe major cities in Taiwan had a good fiber line to the trans-Pacific cable hub. I’d still be interested in seeing any speedtest reports.
I can definitely see getting tired of leaving every month, depending on how far you have to go. Are we talking a plane trip and multiple days, or just a boat hop for a day trip?
You can always use www.speedtest.net to find out pings… Taiwan has fiber lines but as far as its connection into its backbone, that’s going to require trial and error. I just don’t know if your job will require such a low ping since you’re mostly talking to your patients anyways.
The 30 day landing visa means you may only stay for 30 days, and then some would fly to hong kong and back on a day trip, however it can get expensive since it’s about $200 US each trip. You can try and see if a medical firm in Taiwan is willing to employ you, since that would take care of your internet problem (they will most likely have it all sorted out if you have such a strict requirement) and your visa issue. I don’t think doctors will have such a trouble finding a firm willing to employ them anywhere since that’s considered a highly skilled job.
Most likely not in any Asian country. IF you want to setup a business office you can apply for visa’s for that type so you can have legal residential rights with work permits. Anything else is illegal if you are working here.
I’ve just moved into my apartment and the internet is slow as #*$(3. I have been trying to Skype my parents back home in Australia, and it just cuts in and out, even when I’m audio (and not video) calling.
I’m paying my landlord 1000NTD per month for my internet, and i’m connected directly to my model using a Cat5e cable (I’m not wireless, so it can’t be a wireless issue!).
[quote=“Satellite TV”]Well why dont you first use speedtest to TAipei so we can see what adsl speed you have.
NT$1000 a month for a slow line?[/quote]
Yep, that’s a bit much. I pay about NT$1200/month for ADSL, telephone and calls (I use the house phone when calling other landlines) and my internet connection is pretty decent.
Can’t be arsed to take a screen shot, save and post, but just did the test on speedtest.net and my results are (on a Sunday - slow - with two torrents downloading):
Upload - 6.78Mbps
Download - 1.06Mbps
Taipei Server from Tainan
Does anybody know anything about my ISP, ETWebs Taiwan? Perhaps I should use a different company. There are other people in my apartment building who are equally as frustrated with their service, so maybe I could help hook them up too.
Satellite, those ping times to N. America look good to me, if I can manage that during off peak hours I’m set (my clients will be awake while much of Asia sleeps ). Are different levels of internet available? For instance can I pay more and get a fiber line which connects to the trans-Pacific cable hub without hitting copper, or can I pay for custom routing? Any chance you could run a speedtest.net to someplace close to Saskatoon, Canada (thats the location of the server for the company I would contract through)?
Luthiers, unfortunately I’m not a doctor, and I’m not sure what Speech Pathologists get paid there or if there’s even a market for my services. While I have been educated in adult disorders (aphasia, dysphagia, etc.) the vast majority of my experience is with early intervention and the K-12 populations. I currently work in a school system and spend about half my time with common speech and language disorders (articulation, fluency, etc.) and the other half with lower functioning kids (Down’s Syndrome, Autism spectrum disorders, etc.). I think the language barrier might be a problem for medical/hospital based practice since I only speak English, and I’m not sure what my scope of practice there would be (I have a lot of latitude in what I am allowed to treat and diagnose here, probably not as much there).
Hmm… As far as the visa goes, I wonder if any universities there have Speech Language Pathology programs and hire lecturers for a class or two. I could certainly teach something like differential diagnosis since the ideas are the same regardless of language. Just something which gives me a legal job and doesn’t require a lot of hours. Does this seem possible?
You must be employed on a part time basis in order to get a work visa (I think at least 15 hrs a week or something, I am not sure what the numbers are). You can certainly fill those hours with English teaching… the job might actually give you some perspectives on children here since chances are you will be teaching children.
Luthier, I am not surprised, anyone who can do that kind of in-depth research on Kitty Cannon has to be at least a bit on the spectrum. Seriously, though, it looks like it has served you well in helping you maintain your focus on a goal and reaching it.
Satellite, you wrote “Get a Hinet FTTB 10mb down 2mb up fiber account. Very decent service.” I read on another thread that you use a dedicated fiber line, do you think the solution you recommended will give me the same latency to N. America as what you’re getting? I’m figuring 2mb up would be fine with sending voice, 15fps video and some data, am I right?
I worry a bit about working as an ESL teacher since I’m not a teacher. My degree path only had one class in teaching methods and I’m not sure I’d be effective for my students, especially with no local language knowledge. I plan to take lessons there (probably in Mandarin) but would be moving with only English. I really don’t want to be crappy at what I do.
I also worry about making enough to live on. From what I’ve read it looks like English teachers make about 500 - 650 per hour there, at 15 hours per week thats around 30 - 40K per month, and it looks like a decent place to live will eat up at minimum a 3rd of it (and probably closer to half or two thirds). Considering that teaching would be during the middle of the day in Taiwan, and doing telepractice would be during the middle of the night in Taiwan, I’m not sure how I could do both. It looks to me like I would have to teach more hours to live and from what I’ve read here jobs are getting more scarce, finding enough hours is difficult, and a good salary is around 65K per month.
Working as an SLP doing telepractice to clients in North America I can make about 130K per month working 25 hours a week and taking a total of 2 months off per year for various vacations, sick days, and such. The demand is high enough that I could easily increase that to 40 hours per week and make about 210K per month. I’m not looking to get rich, but I’m almost 40 and it would be nice to continue contributing to my retirement and have a reasonably comfortable style of living with short hours and time to really enjoy the country.
Seems like if it’s legal to do the 30 day visa run that might make more sense for me.
Well I use my bandwidth solely for streaming live TV Content at 30fps and the 10mb 2mb lines are fine from Hinet. I have them as well and get same ping speeds to the USA. Your issue is that you want to stream to a place in the boonies in the middle of Canada. That area itself is not known for having good internet internationally as all the main server trunk lines go to the coastal cities.
You wont know until you try it. Ping tests are not always the true indicator of how good your bandwidth will be.
[quote=“Satellite TV”]Well I use my bandwidth solely for streaming live TV Content at 30fps and the 10mb 2mb lines are fine from Hinet. I have them as well and get same ping speeds to the USA. Your issue is that you want to stream to a place in the boonies in the middle of Canada. That area itself is not known for having good internet internationally as all the main server trunk lines go to the coastal cities.
You wont know until you try it. Ping tests are not always the true indicator of how good your bandwidth will be.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m concerned about the North American side of the connection. I’m not overly concerned about the connection as long as what I have is approved by the company I’ll contract through. Any chance you could ping www.tinyeye.com, or better yet go to this url and see if it approves your connection?
). Are different levels of internet available? For instance can I pay more and get a fiber line which connects to the trans-Pacific cable hub without hitting copper, or can I pay for custom routing? Any chance you could run a